


Little Spy Academia episode 2: We'll Always Have Paris.

by flobknocker



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen, this started as a shitpost and grew legs - part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 05:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18067622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flobknocker/pseuds/flobknocker
Summary: Amanda and her teammates are having some well-deserved downtime in France, but get caught up in a much larger web when Director Ursula calls them up out of the blue with an urgent rescue mission.





	Little Spy Academia episode 2: We'll Always Have Paris.

**Author's Note:**

> As with last time, this piece contains violence and a some small, reasonable amount of blood/gore, given what takes place. I feel this is covered by the teen and up rating, but am compelled to mention this anyway. Rule of thumb for this one is there's no more B'n'G than an episode of Cowboy Bebop or a Daniel Craig Bond movie, so if you're cool with that, then you should be fine here. Also, I think there's a swear or two in here, but I think we can all handle that. Have fun.

“Director Ursula was quite insistent that you should join me. I wonder if this is what she sees in you.”

Croix stared at a laptop from within a darkened room. Her legs dangled listlessly to the side of the large swivel chair she’d set up in the server room, and she slurped lazily from an off-brand cup of noodles. She pulled the playback indicator back a few increments, and played the recording from her bug again.

“Director ursula wa…”

She paused it again and put the noodles down. “Hmmm, Ursula. You weren’t there when I was at Luna Obscura.” Croix carefully scanned through the recording, and stopped it at the first time that Diana and Akko had gone into their rooms. She played it again.

“I think Lotte usually does that.”

The sound of the server fans in the room threatened to drown out the audio, but Croix had heard all she needed to. A plan had begun to form in her mind, and she smiled to herself.

“I wonder…”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a warm and hazy summer night, some three hundred people had descended on a small, rustic farmhouse, some forty kilometres outside of Toulouse. Outside, fires burned, people danced and music played, while Inside, men and women of all descriptions met on the top floor to indulge in one another for the night. Below them, a more sedate crowd of revellers assembled to gamble, swear, and drink themselves into a coma with the illegal alcohol that flowed like a river from the makeshift bar. And still further down in the cellar, was the main attraction.

Nearly a hundred people, all crammed into a dank and poorly-lit cellar, jostled, jeered, and jabbed at one another in an effort to get closer to the ring, where six and a half feet of tattooed muscle wrestled against a chubby and undersized challenger. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, feet, earth, booze, blood and cigar smoke. The cheers and boos from the crowd were deafening.

And among them, were two girls who didn’t belong.

Amanda didn’t hear the thump when the huge man fell to the ground, but she felt the impact in her feet, and the crowd erupted with applause. For a moment, the dense audience parted, and she caught sight of Jasminka leaping into the air. The crowd closed, and Amanda was left to guess what would happen next, but once more the ground pulsed, and when she could see the ring again, Amanda understood what had happened.

The man now clutched his chest and lay on the floor, writhing. Jasminka offered him her hand and a cheerful smile, but her opponent was in no fit state to get up. Most likely, Jasminka had broken one or two of his ribs. The referee came over to formally count him out, but the crowd had already declared Jasminka the winner. To that end, a weaselly-looking man came over to Amanda and handed her a wad of cash as thick as her own wrist. “Thanks,” she said, then pressed her hands around her mouth and called out her support for Jasminka.

Yeah! Woo! You rule, Jasna!”

The referee finished counting the man out, prompting the crowd to go wild, and Amanda used the distraction as an opportunity to slip the money to Constanze. Seconds later, Stanbot had worked his magic, and Constanze handed her back two separate piles of notes. Constanze gave Amanda a subtle nod, and pointed to the smaller pile: every third note was counterfeit. Of course, Amanda had expected some amount of chicanery, but she had to admit that making a third of the prize worthless was unusually brazen. She pocketed the four thousand Euros of legitimate cash, then threw the remainder into the air.

“Drinks are on me!” She yelled.

The crowd roared appreciatively, and Amanda took Constanze by the hand as she made her way to the entrance of the cellar. As promised, she thumped the block of counterfeit money down on the bar once she got to the ground floor, then headed for the door. Amanda smirked as she heard the patrons all scrambling to the bar.

Outside, the air was sweet with the smell of dried hay – though the smoke from the fires overpowered it whenever it drifted towards her. The full moon cast its icy blue light in the corners and crevices that the light from the house or the fires failed to reach, and Amanda could see the fields and hills shimmering slightly, as the grass and crops all reflected its light. Were it not for the hundreds of people and the dubstep, she might have described the view as serene.

Amanda wandered towards the dusty patch of field where all the cars and bikes were parked up, and eventually picked her way through it to find the collection of nominally-motorbikes that she and her team arrived on.

Because out of the three of them, only Amanda had a true motorbike.

Jasminka’s huge black tricycle looked an inviting place for her to sit down and unwind for a minute on, but out of respect for her colleague, Amanda instead opted to drape herself over the back of Constanze’s kettenkrad. Constanze joined her and sat in the front.

For a minute or two, neither of them said anything, until eventually, Amanda broke the silence. “You know what, Constanze? I like it out here. The people, the scenery, nobody to tell me what to do. I reckon once I retire from this whole spy thing with, like, a billion dollars or something, I might get a farm; get me a couple of pigs, a cow or two, an old tractor, and just live out my days like this…”

She sat up a bit and looked towards the farmhouse, then slumped back down.

“...Minus the illegal wrestling, maybe.”

Constanze looked thoughtful, as if she were considering whether or not such a life suited her, and Amanda suddenly realised that she had no idea what her partner wanted to do in the future. She might have pursued that thought for a while longer, but was distracted when Stanbot jumped into the back and nestled himself down next to her. He extended his charging cable and connected himself to a port that Constanze had installed in the back, then went into sleep mode.

Amanda had to admit Stanbot could be cute sometimes.

She patted Stanbot gently and went back to lying there, facing the stars, only to have a hand come into view, clutching a crumpled paper bag. “Do you want a jelly baby?” Jasminka asked, and Amanda rolled her eyes, before reaching for the bag. As per usual, Jasminka reacted with a gormless smile and a satisfied murmur, as if she hadn’t just beaten a man around a ring for eight straight minutes.

“Yeah, thanks or whatever,” Amanda said, before throwing a jelly baby in her mouth.

It was lemon flavoured, and she winced at the sharp flavour, though she pulled an altogether more disapproving face when the sound of cheerful banjo music burst forth from her pocket.

It was one in the morning: she didn’t even have to look at her phone to know who the call was from. Constanze and Jasminka both leaned in as Amanda answered her phone.

“Hi dad. I’m on holiday in Germany right now,” Amanda said, before adding “The Rhine’s lovely this time of year.”

With the passphrase given, the voice on the other end now spoke freely, though instead of Director Babcock’s familiar nagging tone, Amanda was surprised to hear Director Ursula.

“Amanda, I’m sorry to cut your break short, but I just received an urgent request for extraction from a member of Red Team.”

Amanda rolled her eyes and put her hand over the microphone, before turning to her team. “Akko’s in trouble,” she moaned, then turned her attention back to the phone call.

“Sure, where is she?”

There was a slight pause from the other end. “She’s currently holed up at the Palace of Versailles: she says her cover’s been compromised and that they’re tightening the noose.” Amanda laughed heartily. “You mean  _ That _ palace of Versailles? Gardens alone bigger than a mile, more gold on the walls than most bank vaults and guarded more ferociously?  _ That _ Palace of Versailles?”

“Yes. That one.”

Amanda looked at the time on the phone, then at her team, and shrugged. “Sure, we can do it, but it’s going to take us like, three hours to get there. Can’t you just shove Diana on a plane or something?”

“I tried that, but Babcock won’t sign off on last-minute plane tickets. You’re the closest we have, Amanda, and I can’t stress how bad it would be for everyone if one of Luna Obscura’s agents got captured. I’m leaving how you do it up to your discretion; I don’t need it done neatly, I just need it done.”

She could have been mistaken, but Amanda could swear she heard a flicker of distress in Ursula’s voice.

“Alright, we’ll do it. One dumb tryhard coming up,” she said.

Amanda didn’t wait for Ursula to reply, and ended the call. She shrugged. “Sure. biggest, snazziest palace in France, no notice, no plan. What could go wrong? Let’s roll, girls.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna Obscura had an equipment cache in a safehouse in one of the more salubrious districts of  Paris, and when they arrived, Amanda and her team wasted no time in setting themselves up for the mission ahead.

With luck, they would be able to get out cleanly and just leave Akko there, ready for one of the other teams or one of the directors to pick her up. She knew from experience, however, that things were rarely that easy. Experiences that had come as the result of Director Babcock’s whims.

Babcock had formed Green Team shortly after Amanda arrived at Luna Obscura, under the notion that if all the troublesome agents could be roped together into one team, then maybe they would be easier to control. Originally, there hadn’t even been an established team leader, rather, Babcock had just sent them out on exercises and hoped they would establish a pecking order.

Amanda still wasn’t entirely sure if she was the team leader.

Constanze turned on the computer and pointed to the seat. Jasminka gathered round it, and went to fiddle with the mouse, but Constaze batted her hand away, to prevent the mouse being coated in snack seasoning. While the two of them silently bickered, the coffee machine coughed and snorted, as it dribbled out the last of its life-giving black liquid.

It was boiling hot, but Amanda took a deep sip anyway.

Together with the soft jazz that she’d put on, it put her in an unusually good mood, considering that she now hadn’t slept for nearly a whole day. Amanda watched her teammates making faces at one another as she drank her coffee, and suddenly felt thankful that her associates didn’t speak much.

If she could talk, Amanda was sure Constanze would have some particularly firm words to say.

Constanze made a final, exasperated wave of her hands as Jasminka laid her hands on the keyboard, but Amanda stepped in before any real friction could arise.

“Alright, ladies. Gather ‘round, because I ain’t explaining this twice.”

Jasminka pulled herself in uncomfortably close, and Constanze poked her head up over the desk in a way that made it difficult to use the keyboard. Amanda sighed. “As of three or so hours ago, Director Ursula has tasked us with extracting Akko from a deep cover mission.”

Constanze tugged at her arm and gave her a critical look.

“Oh, come on. She’s had her cover blown wide open and we’ve been pulled in to save her butt; of course it’s Akko.” Jasminka made a mumble of agreement and Amanda carried on. “Anyhow, our priority is getting Akko out of there. Ideally, I’d like it if we could get her out without any conflict, but given the fact she’s probably mixed up with some shady people right now, don’t hesitate to just go ham on anybody if you need to.”

The others nodded their understanding, and Amanda pulled up an interactive map of the palace to illustrate her next point. “By the time we get there, it will be about five in the morning, giving us two hours to find Akko and get her out before the doors open; assuming everything goes to plan, it shouldn’t take us anywhere near that long.”

Amanda zoomed in on the map, showing the south wing of the building, “now, just strolling up to the front gates won’t work, but the north and south wings have roads by the side, which should make it a piece of cake for us to get onto the roof without anybody noticing. Once we’re on top of the building, we’ll get ourselves in through a window and from there it’s standard infiltration procedure.”

Jasminka looked particularly pleased with herself as Amanda turned to her. “Jasminka, I need you to find our way out if everything goes south,” Amanda said, then she spoke to Constanze. “Camera duties,” she said.

Amanda continued, “once I’ve got Akko with me, I need you two to clear us a path and provide backup if necessary. Not that it will be necessary though, because everything we do always works out so well.”

Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on her teammates.

“Okay, good. Let’s jam.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Eyes and ears, ladies.”

A stiff breeze blew her hair about as Amanda put her earpiece and contact lens in, but she managed to fit it without fuss. Constanze and Jasminka did likewise. 

The orange-tinted light from a streetlamp glinted off the side of her gun as Amanda loaded it, then holstered it below her jacket. With her gun now stowed away, Amanda produced her wand from her pocket and checked it worked, then twisted the base and pointed it upwards.

She nodded to her team.

On Amanda’s command, they pushed the button on their wands, sending their tiny grappling hooks skyward, where they each found their mark on the edge of the palace’s roof. With the help of the tiny, but powerful motor inside, they scaled the wall with ease. Amanda’s long strides took her up as naturally as if she were walking, while Constanze’s diminutive stature allowed her to be hoisted by the mechanism alone.

In a matter of seconds, they found themselves on the roof, and Amanda took the opportunity to look out over Paris, as Jasminka hauled herself over the ledge.

The city lights twinkled and shimmered like reflections on a lake, and among the housing blocks and titanic office buildings, she could see the Eiffel Tower, lit up like a beacon. The night air was slick with exhaust fumes, but the dry summer haze she’d experienced in the countryside remained beneath it. Some distance away, a siren sounded, and Amanda considered how the noise was similar to the call of a bird, once the harsher tones had been subdued by the distance. 

Eventually, Jasminka got to her feet, and together, the three of them walked to the gallery on Amanda’s command. They moved swiftly over the rooftop, keeping a lookout as they did so.

They made their way over to the gallery, where Amanda gave the signal to enter via the skylight window. The panes of glass were narrow, but not so tight of a squeeze that they couldn’t all get in if they went one-by-one, and so Constanze set Stanbot to work on the window. They watched intently, as the little robot attached a sucker to the window, before deploying a powerful laser, which it used to cut through the glass.

Sure, some guard would notice in the morning, but with luck, they would be long gone by then.

Jasminka held onto the sucker once Stanbot had cut through one side of the glass, and when the pane finally fell away, she lifted it out with care and laid it on the roof by their feet. “Constanze, you’re up,” Amanda said, and Constanze nodded. 

Constanze flipped up the screen on Stanbot’s head, and then pulled out a small rod with a camera on the end, from a compartment beneath it. With a flick of her wrist, the rod extended and the camera connected with Stanbot’s screen, allowing her to see through the camera. Amanda lowered the rod down into the gallery for her, and slowly rotated it. The screen showed the inside of the gallery, and Constanze took note of the placement of the security cameras. As expected, there were four cameras in the room, with no obvious blind spots, but from the camera’s elevated position, she could also see that the data cables ran into the walls.

Constanze pushed a button on Stanbot’s control panel, and a drill attachment came from his hand. Stanbot walked to the end of the window, close to where one of the cameras was situated, then began searching for something, and as Stanbot searched, Constanze took the rod. Amanda stood still for her, and raised her arms. Eventually, Stanbot found what he was looking for, and as he began drilling, Constanze waved the camera over her body, being sure to scan every last inch.

With his free hand, Stanbot gave them a thumbs-up, and Constanze nodded to her. “Well, wish me luck,” Amanda said, then backed up to the open window with her wand in her hand.

Jasminka gave her a cheerful nod and Constanze issued her customary thumbs-up.

Close enough, Amanda thought.

She wrapped her arms around her body and let herself fall back, then deployed the grappling hook as she fell. The hook whizzed up and away from her as she fell, and with a second push of the button, it stopped, and caught on the edge of the open window. With only a few feet left to fall, the line snapped taut, and a mechanism inside the wand activated, slowing her descent, until Amanda came to a stop, mere centimetres from the ground.

She smiled to herself, then twisted herself around in a sweeping, balletic motion, reaching her feet with ease.

Amanda felt a little disappointed that the guards wouldn’t have been able to see her do that: with Stanbot now wired into the surveillance system, Constanze could digitally remove her from any images that the cameras recorded, making her effectively invisible.

Amanda looked up, and saw Constanze scanning Jasminka. She waved to them, then retracted the grappling hook and switched her wand to bug detector mode, as a precaution against anything that the gang Akko was following might have left for her.

Then she turned it off again almost instantly.

The wand warbled and wittered in a most alarming fashion, and once she silenced it, Amanda felt something in her gut twist. She’d never known the bug detector to malfunction, and even given the amount of security cameras in the building, it was unlikely that anything like that would interfere with it.

The wand was picking up a veritable swamp of signals.

Amanda poked her ear, “Alright, Constanze, work your magic, where are the goons at?”

The silence she got in reply sounded like “ _ wine cellar, get there now, _ ” so she decided to go ahead and do that, even if Constanze hadn’t actually said anything. “Wine cellar, got it,” she said, then walked off into bowels of the building.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Safe in the knowledge that Jasminka was now skulking around somewhere else in the building, Amanda made her way through the building, sticking to the shadows as she went.

It took her some time to find her way to the network of cellars and tunnels that ran beneath the palace, but eventually Amanda found the right door. With a flick of her wand, the door opened, and she found herself bidden to wander down the stairs. It smelled earthy in the cellar complex,  and though there was some lighting for her to see by, the bulbs were old, and their light had long since begun to fade.

True to her word – or lack thereof – Constanze’s advice about activity proved accurate. From further on in the maze of anterooms, barrels, pillars, and vaulted ceilings, Amanda could hear voices. Curiously enough, they seemed to be speaking English, though at the distance she was listening from, Amanda had difficulty discerning precisely what they were saying.

They certainly didn’t sound French – that much was certain.

Instinctively, she hunkered down and slinked her way down the corridor, pressing herself against oversized wine casks as she went, until the corridor ended, and Amanda found herself just outside a storeroom, stuffed to the gunnels with wine.

It was much easier to hear what they were saying from here, and as she hunkered down, Amanda managed to sneak a glance from around the pillar.

Two young men were standing around an old table, with a bottle of wine between them. The taller of them sported a jaunty haircut and neatly trimmed facial hair, while the shorter of them was far more military in his appearance, with more visible muscle, a perfectly square jaw, and a regulation crew cut. Their outfits, however, gave Amanda pause.

Though tactical black was hardly an uncommon look, the cut of the uniforms seemed familiar to her. Both of them wore a slick black jacket, with tails at the back, that looked entirely too formal for a group of mobsters hiding out in a wine cellar.

She’d seen that look once before.

Amanda twisted the base of her wand and switched it to stun mode, then took another look round, to make sure that her targets hadn’t moved. They hadn’t.

Keeping her ears open for anyone coming, Amanda got to her feet and sprinted towards the two men. The shorter of them spotted her first, but by the time he opened his mouth, Amanda was already within kicking distance.

Her foot connected cleanly with his jaw, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.

The other man backed away from her as fast as he could, reaching for a gun at his side as he did so, but Amanda was faster and better than that. Using her acrobatic skills to her advantage, Amanda leapt onto the table hands-first, and pushed off hard once her legs swung above her, propelling her through the air and closing the gap before he could even point the gun. Her feet landed on his shoulders, pushing him down to the ground and forcing him to drop the gun. Moments later, she’d driven the wand into his neck, and after three seconds, he went totally limp.

Amanda straightened up and retracted the wand, then went over to the first of her victims. Grunting with effort, she tore off a large amount of his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth to form a makeshift gag for when he woke up, then dragged him over to one of the massive wine casks and buttoned his cuffs together behind his back.

It wouldn’t keep him down for long once he woke up, but if she could buy herself as much as five minutes, then that would be enough.

It took almost no time for her to do the same to the other one, and once she’d finished, she grabbed a bottle of wine off the shelf, smashed the end of it against one of the pillars, and poured it over her unconscious victims. That way, a less trusting associate might dismiss their claims as an excuse for being drunk.

With the two of them prepared, Amanda took their guns, then pushed them beneath the cask.

Their guns were stock automatics – with nary a defining feature about them – but she stuffed them into her trousers anyway, reasoning that any extra firepower would help her in the event of a crisis.

After the brief skirmish, Amanda’s footsteps seemed intolerably loud, but as she went on, deeper into the cellars, she miraculously managed to avoid meeting any opposition. It took a considerable effort to remember where she’d come from, as Amanda stalked through the labyrinthine network, but soon enough, she came across a door marked with warnings in English, and went in.

Her gut told her that this door led to where Akko was holed up, and when she opened it, she found that she was only partially right.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A gun clicked against her head, and she wheeled round to face Lotte.

It was dark in the little room, but there was no mistaking Red Team’s most competent agent, who appeared, for all the world, to have not been expecting her at all.

“Amanda? What’re you doing here?”

Lotte put her gun down, and Amanda closed the door behind them, before taking in the room she was in.

Strewn around the room in boxes, crates, and even loose on the ground, was a veritable litany of weapons. Everything from combat knives to assault rifles, rocket launchers and even a minigun, was piled up in every corner of the room, complete with a heap of ammunition sufficient to besiege a town. Most worrisome, however, was not only that all of the hardware was brand new, but that none of it was familiar.

Not even NATO had these weapons.

Amanda turned her attention to Lotte. “I’m here to rescue you,” she said, but Lotte cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“I didn’t ask for extraction.”

Amanda rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Apparently not, but Ursula certainly seems to think you did, so… oh crap.”

Lotte now looked utterly mortified. “Wait, what did you do?” She urged, and Amanda shrugged.

“So I may or may not have laid a couple of dudes out back there; long story short, I just compromised the hell out of your operation and you need out right now.”

“I can’t go now,” Lotte protested, “I’m so close to finding out where all this stuff comes from.”

Amanda took another look around the room, then lowered her voice. “Okay, so what’s up with all the hardware anyhow? These guys look like they’re preparing for armageddon.”

“As far as I can see, they are. These weapons have been popping up in the hands of terrorist groups for years now, and Akko said something about them being tied to the arms dealer she met in Italy. I’ve been undercover with these people for the last couple of months, and from what I can gather, they’re acting as some kind of distributor for these weapons. We’re scheduled to meet the seller tomorrow; you couldn’t  _ possibly _ have come at a worse time.”

Everybody took notice when Lotte raised her voice, and Amanda was no exception, but a quiet shuffling noise from somewhere else within the cellars forced her into action. Amanda jabbed at her earpiece.

“Jasminka, you’d better have good news for me. Please tell me you’ve got a good way out.”

All she got in return was the word “sewer” with as little enthusiasm as that idea merited. Amanda took Lotte by the hand and made an apologetic face.

“I’m sorry, Lotte, “ she said, then spoke into her earpiece again.

“Constanze, clear out of there. Get to the bikes and get ready to go. Now.”

There was an arrogant silence from the other end. “That’s an order, Constanze,” Amanda said, but the silence she got back conveyed swearing and obstinance, and Amanda looked out of the room to see a group of people approaching the room. Among them was a man she was unfortunately familiar with.

“Oh, just brilliant,” she muttered, then pointed to the stockpile, “arm yourself.”

Lotte nodded, and reached for one of the submachine guns while Amanda took an assault rifle. Together, they loaded their weapons as they heard the men approaching, and once they were ready, they took positions in the room, ready to spray indiscriminately at the drop of a hat.

Then the guns began speaking.

“User registered,” they said, with a monotone, British voice, and Lotte almost leapt out of her skin. Hearing the noise, the men that Amanda had seen coming now started advancing towards them with intent, and being left with no choice, Lotte and Amanda swung their guns around and pulled the trigger.

The guns did nothing.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Now, that’s not very nice of you, is it,  _ lucy? _ ”

Lewis’ tone was intolerably smug, and if not for the guns now trained on her, Amanda would have head-butted him. As it was, she told him to go fuck himself. “Oh, such a dirty mouth on this one,” Lewis said, before kneeling down to Lotte in a condescending gesture and placing a finger under her chin.

“Say… you wouldn’t happen to know this girl, would you,  _ Lucy _ ?”

The frankly ridiculous amount of emphasis he put on the name was enough to drive Amanda mad, and she had to assume that Lotte had chosen that name for her cover.

“I don’t know this girl, mister Blackwell,” Lotte squeaked, but Lewis was suitably unimpressed with her response.

“Huh, Interesting. Because I do know this girl.”

“Oh come off it, Lewis. Let her go,” Amanda said. In response, Lewis’ temper flared, and he swished his jacket to the side, revealing a sword, hanging by his waist. Lotte looked terrified, but Amanda remained steadfast. “That’s cute. Don’t know if you’re aware, Lewis, but pointy sticks went out of fashion in the 1800s. But then again, your attitude would fit right in back then, wouldn’t it?”

It seemed for a moment, that Lewis might strike her down where she stood, but instead of drawing his sword, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a phone. Displayed clearly on its screen, were two red icons, with the words  _ new user _ underneath them.

“Those guns don’t seem to be working out so well for you,” he smirked.

Amanda would have gasped, but she was determined not to give Lewis the satisfaction. Inside, however, she reeled at the prospect that the gun she held used Luna Obscura’s verification system. A verification system that – theoretically – had never been used successfully by anybody else.

Lewis drew his sword and pointed it at Amanda, but she didn’t flinch, and instead narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh please, I could beat you in a duel with a ballpoint pen.”

The air quickly became so tense that she could use it as a trampoline, but after a period of consideration, Lewis returned his sword to its scabbard and looked as if he’d just realised something. He fixed the two girls with an intolerable smirk. “You never change, do you, Amanda? Say, now you’ve seen my private stash, wouldn’t you like to meet my new toy?”

Amanda and Lotte both shook their heads. “I have a feeling we don’t have much of a choice in the matter, do we?” Amanda said, and Lewis shook his head.

“No. No, you don’t.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amanda had been gone for far too long.

Up on the roof, Constanze could see the sun coming up over Paris, and that meant there was only an hour left before the palace opened to the public. Given the urgency of the last radio message Amanda sent, Constanze could only assume that something had come up, but as of yet, she hadn’t heard a single gunshot.

Which was quite unlike Amanda.

Adding to her her anxiety was the inability to watch what any of the others were seeing. With Stanbot currently working to erase any traces of her teammates in real time, the poor little thing didn’t have so much as a single processor thread left to render a live feed from Amanda’s eyepiece. Constanze felt herself twitching with irritation as time ticked away in her head.

With that irritation, came a rising urge to do something about it. In the time she’d known Amanda, Constanze had never experienced a mission where everything went according to plan – and it was usually right about now that something went spectacularly wrong. She felt the top of Stanbot’s head, and found it to be startlingly hot from the intensive rendering. “That’s enough, Stanbot,” Constanze didn’t say, but he didn’t respond.

Constanze gave him a harsh tap on the head.

Initially, Stanbot didn’t respond, but he turned round after a second. “Disconnect,” Constance said, without moving her lips at all, but Stanbot shook his head. She scowled at him, but he shook his head again.

“Too dangerous,” Stanbot said.

Frustrated by his sudden apprehension, Constanze reached out to his head to push one of the buttons on his head, but Stanbot kept on repeating his warning. “Not safe. Too dangerous,” he said, and Constanze made a fist at him with her free hand, before pushing the button on Stanbot’s head. She wondered if programming his AI with as much autonomy as she had, was a good idea, but she found the button she wanted, and Stanbot stopped protesting once she pressed it.

The screen on top of his head went blank, then showed a progress bar for a few seconds, as Stanbot dumped a crude version of the program he’d been using, onto the computer that handled the cameras. Under normal circumstances, Constanze wouldn’t have forced him to do that, but now the safety of her teammates was at risk, and Stanbot was expendable.

“Go,” Constanze inaudibly ordered, but even having used the  _ obey command _ button on him, Stanbot still refused to jump down.

“Too dangerous. Rule three. Too dangerous.”

Constanze pointed to the hole in the window with as much force as she could muster, and pulled out her wand to reinforce her point. “Don’t give me rule three, you heap of scrap, Amanda is in danger,” she silented, and Stanbot finally obeyed.

Teaching him the laws of robotics was perhaps not her smartest decision.

Stanbot marched to the open skylight, and jumped down. A second later, Constanze heard a dull clattering sound as her robot landed.

With Stanbot gone, Constanze suddenly felt deeply anxious: without her faithful companion, she lacked the speed or strength to properly defend herself, and had no good way of contacting her teammates. Over time, Amanda had become adept at interpreting her non-words, but Jasminka had so far failed to grasp even the basics of silentese, and Amanda’s stunning ability to dive into firefights made it impossible to communicate without Stanbot. All of which gave her a rather difficult decision to make; stay on the roof, where she was vulnerable, or follow Stanbot into almost certain peril.

Constanze loaded her gun.

The version of the software that Stanbot deployed could only really hide one person at a time – and even then, only if the computer at the end was particularly powerful – so jumping down after him would risk compromising the mission. As she attached her grappling hook to descend, she hoped that the monitoring computer had simply crashed under the strain by now.

Although, Constanze considered, it was a moot point anyway, given how bad a situation she thought Amanda was in.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Well, they haven’t killed us yet, so maybe there’s some hope,” lotte said.

Amanda wasn’t sure how many different twists and turns that she’d been taken down to be tied up in yet another wine cellar, and Lotte’s attempt to stay positive only served to irritate her.

“No, we’re just here because Lewis is a petty little cockroach. Anybody sensible would have put us down by now.”

It wasn’t easy to tell what Lotte was thinking in the dull light of the room, but being tied to the pillar at least allowed Amanda to talk to her directly.

“You seem to know this Lewis guy pretty well, “ Lotte said, “do you two have a history?”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately,” she groaned.

Sensing Lotte wouldn’t be satisfied with just that, Amanda elaborated. “About a year ago, I got sent on a mission to investigate a shadow organisation - counter-intelligence, muscle for hire, that sort of thing - and what I found was a mercenary group calling themselves Appleton. Clearly they’ve relaxed the rules since I found them, because they used to be a strictly boys-only outfit, but I went undercover for a while and had the misfortune of spending an extended amount of time in the company of their leader; the charming Lewis Blackwell. Naturally, there was only so long I could stand his company, so eventually I just beat the crap out of him, blew all his stuff up and ran.”

Lotte made a strange, strangled gasp, but Amanda couldn’t work out if she was incredulous or impressed. She continued anyway.

“I’ll level with you; I have no idea what Appleton are doing hawking hardware to the highest bidder, and in such a swanky location, too. When I was with them, I found out they were funded by British Intelligence as some kind of easily deniable muscle, so I can only assume that MI6 cut ties with them and they’ve found a new master’s leg to hump.”

“That’s mostly what I’ve found out,” Lotte said. “So far, all the money seems to come from an arms dealer called Croix. The guns are all her designs, and since a couple of weeks ago, she’s Luna Obscura’s most wanted.”

“Considering the biometric gun thing, I can only imagine why,” Amanda muttered, but Lotte didn’t seem to have noticed, and instead began singing.

Quite how such a timid and sweet creature as Lotte could ever be cut out for spy work eluded her, but listening to her soft and soothing tones, Amanda had to wonder if Lotte was cut out for any kind of dirty work at all. Nothing so pure should ever be exposed to the harsh world of international espionage, Amanda thought.

If singing was Lotte’s way of calming herself in a crisis, Amanda didn’t want to interrupt, but she found herself quickly proven wrong, as no less than seven tiny drones flew into the room by the open door.

“What the hell are those things?” Amanda asked, and Lotte quickly replied, “they’re my helpers.”

Lotte sang a different melody, and the little swarm about faced and headed out of the room, leaving them alone again.

Amanda noticed that Lotte’s glasses had lit up, and seemed to be displaying several moving images, though she was much too far away from her to see what the videos were of. It wasn’t hard to work it out, though.

“I guess that’s how you saw me coming,” Amanda said, and Lotte nooded, “they go wherever I send them. I can hear anything they pick up and see anything they see. It’s the closest thing to having eyes in the back of your head.”

“So I guess that’s what my wand picked up,” Amanda said.

“Probably, “lotte replied, but then she went quiet, “oh, that looks bad.”

Amanda leaned forward. “What is it?”

“It’s huge. It looks like, some kind of…” She stopped again, and made a quiet whimper. “Something got one of my drones. I’m sorry, I’m not sure what it was, but it looked big and menacing, and I don’t want to meet it.”

As if on cue, one of the Appleton thugs came in, and Amanda recognised him as one of the ones she’d knocked out earlier. “Mister Blackwell requests your presence in the testing range,” he sneered, and Amanda stuck her tongue out at him.

He wasn’t at all gentle when he untied her, and another young man came in to haul Lotte off with him. Amanda noticed that Lotte’s glasses had stopped displaying anything, so she assumed that she’d turned them off somehow, and so she didn’t ask her anything about where they were being taken. Instead, Amanda took the opportunity to annoy her captors as much as possible.

“So how’s that chin feeling, sweethart?” She asked, and the man shoved her along hard.

“That bad, huh.”

She got a rifle butt to the back for her troubles, but knowing she’d got under his skin was justification enough for that. Lotte remained silent throughout.

It took some time for them to be marched to their destination, and Amanda tried her best to memorise the route, but try as she might, she couldn’t get her head around the layout. The only thing she managed to recognise was the room that she’d come into first. As she went past the corridor that led to it, Amanda thought she saw a familiar figure, but she was pushed on before she could get a better look.

Eventually, she was led into a much larger room than she’d seen previously. Amanda guessed that it might have been a storeroom for food and materials once upon a time, but now it had been thoroughly gutted, save for a couple of small barrels at one end of the room.

And a massive robot at the other.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are we sitting comfortably?” Lewis said.

He stood in front of the robot, looking not unlike a salesman hawking snake oil, and grinning like a crocodile.

Amanda couldn’t think of a more punchable face.

The two girls were marched to the far end of the room, and they were forced to kneel down. Lewis strode over to them and knelt down in front of Amanda, so that he could speak to her in as condescending a manner as possible.

“This is the future, Amanda. Isn’t it exciting? You’re going to be the first person turned to mulch by my personal murder machine.”

Amanda remained resolute. “You mean the murder machine you’re renting from Croix. Did MI6 decide to cut you loose after our last meeting? Aww, shame. Must’ve been pretty bad without daddy writing out the cheques for you.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Lewis stood up, and snapped his fingers. The muscle by their side stepped back and trained their guns on them, and then the robot activated.

It made a constant, low, humming sound as it operated, and as it pointed its two weapon pods at them, it emitted a harsh, mechanical growl. Its bipedal design looked powerful, and a distinct lack of any exposed cables or hoses made it hard to identify any weak points. There wasn’t even a head to aim for. Piano black panels concealed what Amanda assumed to be an unfathomable mass of circuitry and wires, and light glinted off tiny sensors, positioned all over the robot’s body. It also moved unlike any robot she’d seen, with smooth and natural movements that looked disconcertingly human.

If she was going to die, Amanda thought, then at least she was going to be killed by something cool.

Lewis stood back, taking a position to the right side of the robot, then raised his fingers to give the signal.

But instead of the sound of fingers snapping, Amanda heard a series of loud, and rapid tapping sounds. As the sound grew nearer, a mechanical whirr could be heard among them, and finally, Stanbot emerged from the entrance, charging headlong at the robot.

“Stanbot!” She cheered, as Constanze’s companion threw itself at the robot, “Woo! Yeah! Kick its ass!”

The murderbot instantly stopped targeting them, as Stanbot got hold of one leg, and tried to prise it open at a joint. The sight was utterly surreal: watching a huge, precision-engineered weapon swatting and batting at a robot not even a tenth of its size, like a person trying to get rid of a wasp, was enough to make Amanda laugh hysterically. Stanbot climbed up the murderbot and tried to take out a sensor, but was unable to do it before the robot swiped at him and he had to move up its body to avoid damage.

Lewis screamed at the murderbot, but its programming evidently prevented it from carrying out orders whilst under attack, and so it continued flailing at Stanbot. After a bit more of this, Stanbot finally emerged at the top, carrying his data cable, and rammed it into the top of the robot, before standing still.

“Shoot it!” Lewis bellowed, and on his orders, the guards turned round, and together, they opened fire on Stanbot.

The sound of gunfire in the cellar was deafening, and in a matter of moments, Stanbot was torn apart, with metal, plastic, capacitors, and resistors all blasted asunder. Stanbot’s remains fell, lifeless, to the floor, but once the last tinkling sound of empty bullet casings stopped, the murderbot pointed its guns at one of the Appleton men. Amanda noticed that a stray bullet had gone through its body.

It opened fire.

The young man to her side was eviscerated by the machine guns, and Amanda hurried to her feet  and dragged Lotte with her, as Lewis sprinted out of the room.

As soon as Lewis left the room, Amanda heard him shriek with terror, and she watched him get thrown aside by Jasminka, as she and Constanze appeared at the door.

Jasminka threw Amanda’s gun to her, then handed Lotte her gun once they had escaped the wrath of the robot, but as the sounds of mayhem came to an abrupt end behind them, Amanda noticed that Lewis had gone. “Get Lotte out of here,” Amanda urged Jasminka, before addressing Constanze.

“Take that thing down.”

Constanze nodded, and Amanda looked round the threshold, to see the robot beginning to advance. “I’m going after Lewis. Get it done!” She said, then sprinted down the corridor.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amanda didn’t have to run for long, before she found lewis again – though the sound of gunfire behind her made Amanda feel horrible for leaving her teammates behind.

The sound of hurried footsteps on wooden stairs told her that Lewis was trying to escape into the palace, and Amanda holstered her gun as she raced up the stairs to give chase. She all but barged the door open once she reached the top of the staircase. As Amanda spilled out into one of the palace’s vast, opulent rooms, she heard confused gasps from all the assembled tourists, and she realised with horror, that there were now hundreds of innocent people at risk.

“RUN!” Amanda screamed, but the tourists stood fast, confused by her sudden appearance.

Without the necessary time to explain, Amanda was forced to run once more, giving chase as she saw a mere glimpse of Lewis’ coat, disappearing around a corner. Amanda hurried after. Tourists swarmed around her, and Amanda had to weave and shove her way through the crowd, following Lewis, only by the trail of commotion that he left in his wake.

Bedrooms, halls, paintings and priceless sculptures all whirled by, as Amanda pushed herself to gain as much ground as she could. With the crowd ahead all bunched up, Lewis would have to push his way through them, allowing her to follow in the slipstream of people. But if she were to pounce on him in the palace, there was no telling what Lewis might do.

No, it was best to hang back. Make him sweat.

Amanda thought she could hear a faint crackling noise as she ran, and she felt a compulsion to just reach for her gun and end the chase right then, but the risk to civilians was just too much.

She had to hope her teammates were having better luck than she was.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In spite of her reputation for chaos, Akko had never gotten her caught up in the middle of a firefight, and for that, Lotte was thankful. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Amanda’s team, who not only seemed to attract mayhem, but actually revelled in it.

With Constanze indisposed, Jasminka had been forced to defend Lotte against any threats on her way to the sewer she’d found, and as Jasminka wielded her gun with abandon, Lotte could only be impressed by her response. The gunshots in the enclosed cellar were so loud as to be disorienting, and between the muzzle flashes, scattered debris and Jasminka hauling her to and fro, Lotte couldn’t even keep track of which way was up.

Thankfully, with Jasminka holding her tight, Lotte only had to worry about shooting at anything that looked vaguely threatening.

Realising that her helper drones were still deployed elsewhere, Lotte sang a hurried and shaky phrase, which she feared would be inaudible over the commotion, but moments later, her glasses lit up. The feed from all six remaining drones popped up, and Lotte sang another short phrase.

The video feeds all sprung into life, as the drones swirled out of their hiding places and whizzed their way to her. With a couple of short notes, Lotte commanded two of the drones to switch to infrared.

Jasminka yanked her by the collar as she caught sight of a man coming down the corridor, and before Lotte had adjusted to her new position, Jasminka dispatched three shots to pacify the latest threat. “One on the right!” Lotte yelped, as Jasminka twirled her around again and took shots at another of the Appleton thugs. Through her drones, Lotte could see Jasminka’s bullets find their mark, as well as the man she’d warned about, preparing to spring from cover.

With two quick shots, Lotte neutralised the threat.

Jasminka pulled Lotte aside again, and let go of her momentarily. As she wheeled about and brandished her gun, Lotte saw Jasminka punching and grappling with two more underlings, while her drones picked up on a third, approaching from behind. The sight of Jasminka laying into two young men twice her size stunned Lotte, but before she could even think to help, Jasminka swung her gun out behind her and ejected the magazine.

Lotte watched in disbelief, as the spent, smoking magazine sailed through the air, and hit the man approaching from behind square in the face.

She wasted no time dispatching him before he could recover, and by the time Lotte turned back, Jasminka had already incapacitated her assailants.

Nonetheless, Lotte was terrified.

Luna Obscura only ever sent their students out with two magazines of ammunition, and with the continued havoc caused by the rogue murderbot, there was no way they would be able to escape without more fighting. Trembling, Lotte realised that the slide of her own gun was now locked in the open position, and that she too, needed to reload.

From deeper within the network of cellars and tunnels, came a dreadful, rumbling explosion sound, and Lotte turned to see where it had come from. Her surroundings were momentarily bathed in searing orange light, and Lotte gasped as she glimpsed Constanze emerging from the fireball. More gunfire stung lotte’s ears as she watched Constanze empty a submachine gun on the advancing robot, before fleeing.

The robot fired again, and disappeared in a hail of debris and smoke.

Lotte found herself momentarily overcome with worry at the thought of Constance’s demise, but before she had any chance to respond, Jasminka yanked her arm, and pulled her along. More rooms and walls passed them by, but as her drones looked round the corners for her, Lotte could see yet more of the Appleton agents, all running towards them. If they kept going on like this, then either their luck of their ammunition was going to run out.

It was just a matter of which one happened first.

One of the drones picked out another agent coming down the corridor towards them, and Lotte levelled her gun. With Jasminka keeping her in motion, placing a good shot at range was almost impossible, and so Lotte’s first shot went low, kicking up a shower of sparks, before she fired again. This time she found her mark, but his reaction made it clear that she had only managed to hit his hip. Fearing the return fire that would surely come her way, Lotte patted Jasminka on the shoulder and pointed to a tunnel that off to the right.

“That way!” Lotte called, her voice almost drowned out by another explosion sound, which - to her horror - was accompanied by screams.

Jasminka took the right turn, as requested, and Lotte fired another wild shot, to keep the wounded agent down long enough for them to duck down the tunnel. The tunnel was short, and dark. Here, the sharp, bitter smell of powder from all the gunfire seemed more concentrated, and Lotte coughed hard as it permeated her nostrils. As they rushed onward, Lotte checked ahead of herself with the drones. She shuddered with relief as she found that the route did, in fact, take her out near the weapons storeroom that Amanda had found her in. “In there!” Lotte yelled, and Jasminka hauled her along.

They crossed the small, open space in only a couple of seconds, and when they reached the storeroom, Jasminka barged the door open.

While finding ammunition for their own weapons would be impossible, Lotte now had no choice but to use one of Croix’s guns, and hope that Lewis was too busy with Amanda to disable them.

Jasminka kicked the door shut.

Together, they each chose a weapon, and as they did so, Lotte watched the feed from her drones. The two drones on infrared mode had stationed themselves outside the door, and the others had spread out to cover all the entrances to the central chamber. As she picked up a second magazine for a submachine gun, Lotte saw a group of Appleton agents emerge from the tunnels.

“They’re coming,” Lotte whispered.

With her gun now chosen and loaded, Lotte turned round, and found that Jasminka had selected the minigun that she’d seen earlier. It appeared to weigh no more than a baby in her hands. Lotte watched in awe, as Jasminka picked up an entire crate of ammunition for the weapon, and slung her arms through it like a backpack. With a deft motion, Jasminka opened the box on her back enough to permit the belt inside to come out, then fed it carefully into the bottom of the gun, before pushing a button on the top. The gun made a quiet whirring sound as all seven barrels rotated slowly, with every round loaded making a ticking sound, until the barrels stopped again.

Through her drones, Lotte could see that about six Appleton agents had assembled outside the locked door, armed and ready to strike.

One of them raised his gun, and Lotte waved her arms at Jasminka to warn her, before a bullet smashed through the door. Moments later, all six agents opened fire. Lotte screamed, as dozens of bullets peppered the door from all angles, sending splinters flying, and subjecting her ears to another prolonged assault. From her position - pushed as tightly up against the wall as she could get - Lotte could only wince, as fragments of wood flew up at her and embedded themselves in her skin, and tiny bits of the stone walls inside showered her. When the shooting stopped, Lotte was so scared that she had to breathe manually.

And yet, somehow, Jasminka stood in her corner, completely unfazed.

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” She said.

The drones showed one of the agents walking up to the door, as Jasminka moved away from her position in the corner, and slung the gun by her side. She planted her feet firmly, then pressed a button. Instantly, the barrels began rotating, emitting a mechanical wailing sound, before the door opened, and Jasminka opened fire.

For as much as modern ammunition purported to be smokeless, the plume of searing hot, silvery-grey smoke that poured from the barrels and scathed at Lotte’s throat, begged to differ. For five whole seconds, the gun released so many bullets, that the report sounded like a single, continuous, bowel-evacuatingly horrible sound. Sparks and fire spewed forth from the gun, illuminating Jasminka’s face as she fired, and Lotte yelped as hundreds of hot, smoking, spent cartridges poured from the gun like water, hitting her legs and burning her. It felt as if the air itself was being ripped apart by the beastly weapon, and when Jasminka finally released the trigger, the barrels moaned to a halt, and the cellar was suddenly deathly silent.

Trembling from the spectacle, Lotte crept her way out from her position, and peeped round the remains of the door.

True to her word, the Appleton agents had disappeared in a puff of smoke. As had barrels and bottles of wine, tables, chairs, lights, and entire sections of wall. In a forty degree radius, there wasn’t a single thing in the room that had escaped unscathed.

Jasminka motioned for Lotte to follow, and she complied, suddenly terrified of the idea of disobeying Jasminka. When they got out, Lotte took another good look around, then cocked her ear, but there was no trace of movement, just the almost imperceptible whine of her drones.

Satisfied that no more Appleton agents were coming to hurt her, lotte sang a mellow, and sombre melody, before reaching into her pocket, and pulling out a small, aluminium case. On her command, the drones all flew back to her, and each landed gently in the case.

She didn’t notice that one of them was slightly larger.

“This way,” Jasminka said, and Lotte put the drones away in her pocket, as she followed her to safety.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The robot had erupted into the palace a few minutes ago, but as much as Amanda wanted to turn back and fight it, Lewis took priority.

Irritatingly, Lewis had run away from the palace, going the opposite way from where her motorbike was parked, so any chance of pursuing him on that was now gone. Far more bothersome, however, was how he kept weaving and ducking between civilians, making any attempt to take a shot at him far too risky.

Lewis dashed off down a side street, and Amanda reached for her gun as she prepared to round the corner, but when she swung round, she found herself faced with an empty alleyway. Empty, save for Lewis scrambling over a wall. Amanda took a quick shot, but Lewis had already vaulted the wall by the time she’d pulled the trigger, leaving her with no choice but to holster her weapon and give chase once more. The sound of her footsteps echoed in the narrow little alley, as Amanda jumped at the wall, and swung herself over with the grace of an acrobat. To her surprise, Amanda landed in a flowerbed, and now found herself in a hotel courtyard, among a dozen confused onlookers.

One of them pointed right, and Amanda shouted her thanks to the woman.

Behind her, Amanda could hear screaming coming from the street, and she gritted her teeth as she thought of the throng of innocent tourists fleeing the chaos she’d escaped.

Her shoes scattered the fine gravel of the courtyard as Amanda ran after Lewis again, and as she saw him barging past a waiter to get into a door, she swore quietly. The same waiter looked at her indignantly as she sprinted his way, but he had sense enough to move, and Amanda slipped past him, only to rush into a salubrious dining room. The guests all fixed her with a cruel stare, but Amanda just raised her middle finger to all of them, and carried on running.

Lewis was being sloppy now. His escape from the palace had been clean enough, but now he didn’t seem to have a clear idea of where to go, and with every civilian he elbowed his way past in the hotel, Amanda gained ground. He had to choose where to go: all Amanda had to do was to follow.

After a minute of chasing him through the hotel, Amanda managed to eat up a significant amount of Lewis’ lead. At this distance, she could shoot him if Lewis only gave her the chance. Seemingly aware of this fact, Lewis ducked and weaved around ever more erratically, and Amanda followed him, until he finally ran out of hotel to run through. Amanda watched with glee, as Lewis pushed past the last bystander, only to find himself pressed up against a wall. Without people to put between the two of them, Lewis took off to the left, running along the wall, and Amanda reached into her jacket for her gun. She wouldn’t draw it in front of the crowd, though: at this point, she didn’t need to. Amanda was circling a wounded gazelle.

Lewis found a door, and barged it open, and Amanda hurtled through it after him, and found that it led to a stairway. Lewis was climbing the stairs rapidly. “Stop right where you are, y’asshole!” Amanda called, but Lewis kept climbing, and she was forced to climb after him. Unfortunately, the staircase was tightly wound on itself, which prevented her from just shooting him, and try as she might, she couldn’t push herself up any faster. She climbed floor after floor, until she reached a door at the very top of the staircase. Amanda barged it open.

Immediately, the blade of a sword swung into her view from the right.

Amanda swung her head back so hard and so fast, that she almost performed a feat of acrobatics on the spot. The blade buried itself in the door with a bang. Once she realised that her head was still connected to her body, Amanda moved swiftly, to get out onto the rooftop before Lewis could strike again.

The moment Amanda set foot on the rooftop, she felt the air around her pulsing, and a powerful mechanical rumbling sound filled her ears, as a helicopter flew startlingly low overhead. Both Amanda and Lewis paused to watch, as it moved at speed towards the palace of Versailles.

Then Lewis came at her again.

He lunged with his sword, before swinging it this way and that, and Amanda didn’t have the time to counter. She backed away from him at speed, and wondered if he had deliberately lured her here to kill her, but then Amanda remembered who she was fighting, and quickly thought otherwise. Lewis just got lucky.

Amanda drew her gun as Lewis advanced further, but against his constant onslaught, she couldn’t move her gun into position without risking her own life. Instead, she ran. Lewis ran after her.

The roof of the hotel was flat throughout, and Amanda sprinted along its length, but after so much running, her strength was beginning to fail her, and as she came to the end of the roof, Amanda quickly realised that the jump she had planned wouldn’t materialise. As hard as she’d ran, Lewis remained just behind her, and now she’d run out of rooftop, she was vulnerable.

Lewis swung his sword.

Panicked and exhausted, Amanda dived to the side as the sword came for her, and she landed heavily, before rolling and getting back to her feet. Lewis swung again, and with no time to evade, Amanda pushed her gun up and swatted the blade away from her.

The impact from the sword went all the way through her hand and down her arm, and her gun tumbled from her grasp. Realising that it wouldn’t be long before Lewis swung once more, Amanda applied a swift foot to his chest. He grunted, and stumbled back.

Without her gun, or the time to pick it up, Amanda had only one good option at her disposal. She drew her wand and extended the end.

As expected, Lewis came at her again, with a face like thunder. He lunged this time, and Amanda twisted herself around to the left, before swinging for him with her wand. Sadly, Lewis was far too quick for such a basic counterattack, and he managed to deflect her strike. He swung again, forcing Amanda to abandon her attack.

She reeled away away from him, and swung her wand again - if only to keep Lewis at bay - but the moment Amanda found her footing, Lewis swung again.

Amanda could hear him snarl as he tried to cut her down, and she ducked down to avoid the blade.

Had she reacted but a fraction of a second later, the blade would have gone clean through Amanda’s neck, but as soon as she felt Lewis’ sword slice through her hair, she found herself faced with an incoming knee. Lewis’ knee hit Amanda square in the forehead, and the impact knocked her head back hard enough to send her sprawling on the floor.

Lewis raised his sword again, ready to drive it down into her gut.

A flash of the morning sunlight reflected in the blade, dazzled Amanda momentarily, as Lewis began to plunge his sword down at her, and in a last-ditch attempt to save herself, Amanda swung both her legs up and around. Her left foot made contact with the sword. Amanda saw the sword come down only an inch or two from her chest, and heard it ring as it smashed into the ground. A tiny shower of masonry hit her jacket as the tip of the blade dug into the rooftop, and Lewis cried out in frustration. His exaltation was cut short by a swift kick to the ribs.

Lewis staggered back from Amanda’s double leg kick, and she hauled herself back to a standing position, ready to end the fight. Seeing an opportunity, Amanda twisted the base of her wand all the way round, then pointed the end at Lewis, who snorted in amusement.

“What are you gonna do? Turn me into a newt?”

Amanda pushed the button, and the end whizzed out and hit Lewis in the eye.

It was almost too hard not to laugh as Lewis recoiled from the tiny grappling hook, but Amanda took her opportunity, and sprinted towards him. Before Lewis could even attempt to ward her off, Amanda caught his arm, then sunk down and made a sweeping kick at his legs.

As she’d hoped, Lewis’ feet flew out from underneath him, and he tumbled down to the ground, dropping his sword as he went.

With Lewis now on the ground, Amanda wasted no time pinning him down with her foot. “Call off the killbot. Now.” She demanded, but Lewis shook his head, and the fear in his face told her he wasn’t bluffing. “I didn’t make it do that!” He snapped back, “now let me go, you brute!”

Amanda noticed that his hand had begun slinking over to his sword, and she promptly made sure he abandoned that idea by stepping hard on his arm. “I was afraid you’d say that,” she said, as she twisted the base of her wand again.

Amanda pushed the button, causing the stun head to crackle into life, then took a moment to enjoy Lewis’ reaction to it, before jabbing it into his neck.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Constanze, give me some good news, girl! Please tell me our big mechanical buddy ain’t moving any more!”

In response to Amanda’s question, Constanze tapped her earpiece twice, then ran into one of several dining rooms in the palace, firing indiscriminately behind her as she went. “Oh, that sounds like a whole lotta collateral damage. I’ll take that as a no, then,” Amanda groaned.

Constanze fired another shot behind her, then dived under the long and ornate dining table in the middle of the room, to hide from the robot’s formidable firepower. The robot – having no regard for French baroque stylings – fired at the table anyway.

A maelstrom of splinters burst from the table and saturated the air, and Constanze had to run as fast as she could, to avoid the devastation winding its way up the table. With each passing second, the hail of bullets got closer, until eventually, Constanze was forced to roll out from underneath the table to avoid getting cut down. Immediately, the robot ceased firing at the table, and swung its guns round to track her. Constanze fired off the last of her magazine in desperation as she ran to the door, but the relatively puny ammunition bounced off, leaving her all but defenceless, and forcing her to flee. 

She managed to get past the door before the robot fired again.

A burst of gunfire called after her as Constanze headed right, and behind her, she saw paintings, statues, and pillars get shredded in her stead. Knowing that standing still would surely bring her swift death, Constanze sprinted for the nearest staircase, while the heavy, mechanical footsteps of the robot behind her ensured that she kept up the pace.

After running through three rooms, a new sound swelled in her ears, and threatened to overwhelm the noise of the robot. A distinctive, rapid, rhythmic thumping noise that she felt in her bones, and which rattled all the fixtures and fittings around her, rose to deafening volume, accompanied by the distinctive screech and roar of jet exhaust. Seconds later, Constanze saw thick cables swing down over the windows. After hurrying round a corner to avoid the robot’s line of sight, she saw the first of the special forces operatives dropping down, and Constanze quickly stowed her gun, before running straight towards them.

To play up the role, Constanze screwed up her face and pretended to cry, as she ran towards the soldiers, with her arms outstretched.

If she could make the noises necessary to scream, she would have done.

Three of the operatives breached at the same time, and the one in the middle quickly knelt down, ready to accept her into his arms, as the others stood by his side and opened fire. However, no sooner did she reach the arms of the operative, than the robot fired again.

The two operatives either side of her were hit simultaneously with enough rifle-calibre bullets to tear them apart, and they both dropped to the ground in a spray of blood, as Constanze was whisked off her feet. The remaining operative held her tight as he leapt back, but the killbot shifted its aim, and fired again.

For a fleeting moment, he squeezed Constanze harder than ever, then dropped her like a sack of rocks.

Screaming silently, Constanze flailed about in mid-air, as the lifeless soldier dropped to the floor, and she gritted her teeth as she caught the rope and burned her hands. The corpse hit the ground only a metre or so below her, and she began carefully lowering herself down, until the helicopter she was hanging from suddenly swayed violently.

Constanze let go immediately, and felt herself being flung through the air, as the noise from the helicopter’s engines suddenly fell silent after a hail of gunfire. She hit the ground on her feet, but her momentum made sure that she didn’t stay upright, and so she collapsed in a heap, and rolled several times, until she came to a complete stop.

Then the helicopter came down.

Constanze could only watch, as hundreds of thousands of euros of precision-engineered aircraft dropped out of the sky, and smashed into the ground. The blades obliterated the hard ground, sending chunks of cobblestone and fountains of sparks asunder, before shearing off completely, and whirling through the air; narrowly missing her. The fuselage crumpled, oil spilled, fuel sprayed, and the cockpit glass shattered, until - finally - the stricken engine ingested its own fuel and exploded, engulfing the helicopter in a fireball.

And the killbot just stood there, watching.

Constanze hauled herself to her feet, and finally saw the huge crowd of police and military that had surrounded the palace. As much as it pained her, she realised that her best option was to run straight toward them.

The cobblestones made a loud clacking sound as she ran, which sounded too much like gunfire for Constanze to be comfortable, but the sound of her own shoes was quickly joined by the sound of actual gunfire. Just about every assembled person with a gun opened fire at the robot, to cover her attempt to escape.

It responded in kind, but as Constanze looked back, she saw it shake, and noticed small pieces coming off it.

So it wasn’t invulnerable.

The assembled officers and the remaining special forces all kept up their assault as she got past the gate, and as she ran off into the crowd, Constanze saw tanks pulling up.

The soldiers all parted, and Constanze used it as an opportunity to slip away unnoticed, as the big guns rolled in. Perhaps they would be enough to stop the robot, she thought.

She turned right at the road, and began making her way to where the bikes were, making sure to look as much like a helpless child as she could all the way. In total, it took Constanze just under three minutes to reach the alleyway that the team had left their motorbikes, and there she saw Amanda, Lotte and Jasminka.

Constanze cocked her head to the side in confusion, before recoiling at the smell. “Yeah, I know,” Amanda said, tersely, “somebody back home fed us a fat, steaming bowl. Now get on: we’re leaving.”

Amanda gestured to the kettenkrad, but Constanze shook her head, adamantly.

“What do you mean,  _ no _ ?” Amanda said, and Constanze folded her arms in defiance. “No way, girl. No way we’re going for another round against that thing!”

Constanze stomped her foot on the ground, and in response, Amanda swayed her head. “Nuh-uh. Don’t you sass me,” Amanda warned, before walking slowly over to her, but still Constanze reamined firm, and scowled back at her.

Amanda picked her up.

“Alright, girl. You’ve earned yourself a time out,” Amanda said, as she hoisted her off the ground. Constanze let out a stream of silent profanity as she was carried ignominiously to her vehicle, and dumped in the seat without grace or tact. “Watch your language, young lady,” Amanda warned, and in response, Constanze stuck her tongue out, before prodding the starter button.

The kettenkrad made a low, menacing humming sound, as the powerful electric motor she’d installed jumped into life and spun up, but its noise was quickly beaten down by the cacophonous racket of Amanda’s motorbike.

Seconds later, the sound of Jasminka’s trike starting completed the chorus, and Amanda rode off, leading the pack and bidding her to follow.

They emerged onto empty streets, and Amanda turned left, taking them to the cordon that had now been errected around the palace.

Insofar as it was possible for a procession of bike-like vehicles, to be discreet – particularly ones being driven by teenage girls – they made their way past the palace, and they each looked on as the tanks rolled in.

The killbot took one of them out with a rocket, and Constanze was almost consumed with an urge to join the fight, but the remaining tank replied with its cannon, and the fight came to an end.

“It’s okay, Constanze. You saved lives back there,” Amanda said over the radio, but no matter how much she tried to take that to heart, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. There was now a massive hole in the side of the palace, and as the dust began to settle, she watched the news crews swarming in like vultures.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Save for Director ursula, the firing range at Luna Obscura was completely deserted.

Diana took a set of headphones and walked past the divisions, taking the stand to the right of Ursula.

She took her gun out and loaded it.

Diana watched, as Ursula placed three shots into the target’s chest, then pushed a button to call a target for herself. She took a couple of shots, then spoke carefully.

“The news says the Palace of Versailles will require repairs in the region of almost a billion pounds. Green team got back a few hours ago. I’m certain they’re feeling just wonderful about the whole thing.”

Though Diana couldn’t see her face, the pause that Ursula took spoke volumes of her reaction. “That’s unfortunate, Diana-” Ursula took another shot at the target, “though I’m afraid these things can’t be helped.”

Diana felt herself bristling at her response. “You could have sent another team,” she said, and Ursula took another shot before she answered.

“There wasn’t a team nearby that could handle the mission.”

Diana took another couple of shots at her target, being sure to lodge them in the head, “Yellow team were in Belgium when you sent the order: they could have dealt with it sooner. And cleaner.”

“Bot nut necessarily as effectively,” Ursula said, “I was operating under the assumption that Lotte was already compromised and needed to be rescued from considerable danger.”

“Which marks the second time you’ve sent an agent out into the field with bad information,” Diana said, firmly, “by coincidence, it would seem that Lotte was investigating Croix’s operation, too.”

Ursula emptied the remains of her magazine into the target, and Diana followed suit. “I didn’t know anything about that. Lotte’s operation was sanctioned before your encounter in Italy, and without my say so. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if this wasn’t some kind of retaliation.”

Diana heard Ursula reloading, and Ursula continued, “I certainly didn’t mean to put Any of them in danger, if that’s what you’re insinuating: Lotte’s distress signal came in as text only, through Alcor. I had no way to verify if it was her, but I had no choice but to get her out.”

Diana had heard enough. She aimed her gun to the left, and fired all her remaining bullets into Ursula’s target, before speaking again, in her coldest warning tone. “ _ When facing a new enemy, look first for treachery from within _ : Director Finnelain’s words, not mine.”

The magazine made a rattling sound as it slid out into Diana’s hand hand, and she looked at the target with satisfaction, before walking out. But before she could leave, Ursula made one last remark.

“Are you threatening me, Diana?” Ursula asked, in a tone that sounded at once more sincerely upset than she would have expected, but with an authority she’d not heard from Ursula before. “No, Director,” Diana said, “I’m just following a line of enquiry. It would be prudent to take a look at the weapons green team took back with them, too. Goodnight.”

And with that, Diana left Director Ursula alone at the range, only stopping a for moment as she passed behind her.

She was shooting with both hands on the gun, with one leg in front of the other.

The kind of position that somebody used to a gun with far more recoil than the directors’ guns might naturally adopt.


End file.
